NEW YORK — The head of Donald Trump’s transition team has insisted a prospective Republican administration won’t even consider recruits from the “radioactive” Project 2025 database — prompting an insider to push back by saying the Heritage Foundation-led initiative has 18,000 Republicans involved and is “too big to fail” as a result.
“Heritage, because of Project 2025, is radioactive,” Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick told The Post Tuesday night in the spin room ahead of the CBS News vice presidential debate.
“As in, none, zero, radioactive. So that’s a clear position.”
The Trump team has claimed publicly for months it will not tap personnel vetted and trained under Project 2025 to fill executive branch positions, in part due to Democrats and the media accusing the policy book of being too radical on issues like abortion.
But one former member of the Trump presidential personnel office (PPO) told The Post that Lutnick’s blanket rejection was “bizarre,” claiming that “it would be impossible to do a transition without including Project 2025 people.”
Lutnick’s team has “already reached out” to people affiliated with Project 2025, the source went on, arguing there is no possibility of staffing a second Trump administration “unless he’s going outside of the conservative movement.”
The former PPO staffer added that the Project 2025 database includes Republicans from a wide-ranging list of different groups, including Turning Point USA and “state legislative staff.”
The source also insisted that Lutnick may just be pushing one message “publicly” to take the heat off the Republican campaign.
Project 2025 is continuing to host events and market itself as giving a boost to ambitious GOP officials. The project’s website, as of Wednesday morning, still prompted recruits to fill out a questionnaire “if you would like to be considered for positions in a presidential Administration.”
The disparity between Lutnick’s claim and those of the insider prompted the Trump team to tell The Post that final decisions about who will serve on the transition team have not been finalized.
“President Trump announced a Trump-Vance transition leadership group to initiate the process of preparing for what comes after the election. But formal discussions of who will serve in a second Trump Administration is premature,” campaign communications director Steven Cheung said.
“President Trump will choose the best people for his Cabinet to undo all the damage dangerously liberal Kamala Harris has done to our country,” Cheung added, not mentioning Project 2025 directly.
“Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term. President Trump personally led the effort to establish 20 promises made to the forgotten men and women across our nation, as well as RNC Platform — these are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term,” Trump senior adviser Danielle Alvarez added.
“Dangerously liberal Kamala Harris and the DNC are LYING and fear-mongering because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people. Remember these are the same people that lied to Americans and hid Joe Biden’s cognitive decline all these years, and are currently lying about Kamala Harris serving as the border czar, being responsible for out-of-control inflation, and failure across on every front.”
The Trump transition team is spearheaded by Lutnick and his co-chair Linda McMahon, the former head of the Small Business Administration who is currently a chair at theTrump-inspired America First Policy Institute.
The honorary transition team chairs include Trump’s eldest sons Eric and Donald Jr. as well as running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and two former Democrats — former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The team has already started reaching out to “talented” Republicans that could fill the thousands of administration spots so Trump would be ready to govern on day one..
“Gabbard is focused on national security and Bobby Kennedy is focused on the health institutions,” Lutnick said Tuesday night.
“They’re focused. Tulsi is just an incredible, thoughtful person in national security. She cares about it, she dreams it. It’s who she is. So she’s helping us find talented people for national security.”
“You know, Bobby Kennedy is food.” he added. “You know, ‘Make Food Safe Again, Make America Healthy Again.’ So he’s going to focus on [bringing] talented” people into the government.
Those close to the Trump campaign have stressed the particular need to root out Republicans who have been disloyal to the former president from holding positions in the next potenial administration.
Donald Trump Jr. has specifically said he wants to have “veto” power over top positions, and on Tuesday night said those applicants with “Rs next to their name” won’t necessarily be invited to join.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), another Trump surrogate, told The Post he wants to see those “who want to follow Donald Trump’s agenda” in power.
“People who are willing to go into our federal agencies and really clean them up,” Donalds said in describing his ideal appointee. “Get our agencies focused on doing their job, not these mission creeps that have been happening for far too long.”
